


the confessions of fools

by bokutoma



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Catholic Guilt, Confessional, Confessional Sex, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Other, POV Seteth (Fire Emblem), Religion Kink, Sexual Repression, Top My Unit | Byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:07:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29073033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: seteth has a secret, one that he hoped he could confess to rhea before she deferred her position to byleth.well, he'll have to make do.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Seteth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31
Collections: Courage My Love: A Setleth Zine





	the confessions of fools

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for the nsfw side zine for [courage, my love](https://twitter.com/setlethzine), the undone and the divine

Sentimentality is a pursuit best reserved for old men and fools, especially in the face of momentous victory, but then, Seteth has been both for quite some time now. Garreg Mach sings with cheer and divine relief, and has ever since he’d returned to deliver the news of the war’s end, but he finds himself drawn far more to melancholy, even as the revelry surrounding the new archbishop’s appointment draws deep into the night for a week with no end. Guilt draws heavy curtains across the shadowed alcoves of his mind until all he knows is a deep, unabiding self-loathing.

He has not been to confession in quite some time.

It’s a shameful admission to make, even to himself, but ever since the Empire had kidnapped Rhea in her moment of weakness, he has kept each and every transgression locked away tightly behind the split-seam press of lips and the iron bars of his heart, not to be acknowledged until he had his friend, his ally, his only confidant, back safe and sound.

It will be another thing entirely to confess his sins to Byleth.

Rhea, at the very least, had understood the flaming  _ wants  _ that now run through his veins, long dormant but now seething and eager to erupt. In some regards, she had contended with them as well, though not quite in the same manner as he.

Goddess, he feels like a lecher.

When Byleth and their new attendants had returned from the war, a bout of longing nostalgia had gripped him with such ferocity that he’d had to hole himself up in his office to prevent himself from doing anything rash.

“So many people are visiting the Goddess Tower!” Flayn had said, cheerful as ever, mistaking the grimace stretched across his face for the usual kind when she broached the topic of romance. “Though I suppose war’s end means gladder tidings for all. Even Byleth has gone to visit! I wonder who they were hoping to see…”

His saving grace is that nothing has come of that. Of their many adorers, they seem to trust him the most, and it’s an honor he seeks to be worthy of every day. 

If they knew the thoughts that poisoned his mind like wine at an Imperial banquet, they would not let him within ten feet of them, and he would deserve this and more.

The makeshift confessional they have built from the rubble of the demolished chapel is sturdier than he might have expected from a group of students with little to no experience with carpentry or masonry between them, though the cobbled together fragments of scratched marble and singed wood fill him with more sorrow than he’d ever thought a building could. He has seen worse; he has caused destruction on a scale that makes this look trivial.

Yet this had been home, and even if it would be again, he cannot stop the ache in his chest that swoons and sighs with every whisper of the wind through open walls.

He is not the only one who has the desire to unburden his soul; it is a sacrament, and the most holy, if one truly subscribes to the doctrine of the church. Today, however, the chapel itself is barren, and he wonders if the magnitude of what he is about to admit to has sent a repellent aura to chase any bystanders away. It’s a flight of fancy, of course, and a foolish one, at that, but it’s nice to think that there will be no witnesses to the catastrophe that will almost certainly take place here.

He will confess to wanton lust, for it is a sin, but to confess that to the star of said desires and fantasies is another thing entirely.

Theoretically, the sacrament of confession is allowed to be anonymous; a screen is set between the confessor and the archbishop, and only with permission would they set it aside. When he enters, he does the work of folding it up and setting it to the side for them. It would be foolish to believe they would not recognize his voice, and he will not add further cowardice to his list of sins.

“Seteth,” they say, and their voice is like music, a melody he never thought he’d find himself attuned to, but one that sweeps him under nonetheless. “I feel as though I haven’t seen you in quite some time, what with all the celebration.”

It is a perfectly innocuous admission, yet it sends flames running through his gut like a funeral pyre.

“Nor I you, Archbishop,” he replies, and he wonders if they understand the lengths he is going to in order to keep them at a distance, wonders if they understand why that might be. “And I suppose this setting is not exactly conducive to relating the details of the past weeks to each other, either.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” They are smiling now, and in this, the closest they get to true laughter, he is gone. “I cannot imagine you have all that many sins to share.”

But this is the worst thing they could have said, and he feels the openness of his expression - for it is always so around them - shutter closed like doors to a traveler.

Here, their face draws down as well, and it is so like him, he thinks, to drown everyone else in his misery. What a fool, to think himself any better than the sinners he had once condemned.

“Oh, Seteth,” they whisper, their voice as fragile and dangerous as glass. “It is not my judgement you have to fear.”

“No?” He laughs, the sound sticky and foreign in his throat. “I would withhold your determination until you hear what I have to say.”

They are silent, damnably, laughably silent, and it is this moment that he chooses to store in his long memory, the last one before what will certainly be the unavoidable change of everything he has come to value over these past six years.

He sinks his head into a low bow, his hand aborting the familiar gesture known only to him, his siblings, and his daughter. It is the old way that he unconsciously mimics when in deep distress, but it is not the old way that Byleth knows, despite everything, and they would not understand the bone-deep longing for carnal penance he carries in his soul, the evocations of the hottest pits of Ailell.

“Heal me, conduit of the Divine Goddess,” he whispers, though the sound carries well in this small room. “It has been many months since my last confession, and I have sinned grievously in my absence.”

There is a script that ought to be followed, one even he and Rhea had adhered to, after a time, but Byleth merely nods, shifting like they wish to reach out and provide comfort.

It is the antithesis of what he needs; it is everything he desires.

“You know I have killed, that I have all but reveled in doing my duty when faced with the desolation of all I hold dear. I do not have to tell you of my sins in that regard. You are aware as well of the wrath that suffuses me, so unlike the righteous fury of your forebears. I need not speak of this either, unless you should wish it.”

They shake their head - they have felt it too, and if this had been the sum of his confession, he feels as though there might not have been much in the way of penance at all. 

“But last of all, there is a sin even you do not yet know of, one that troubles me to my core and will certainly cause you to think ill of me.”

“Seteth-”

“Please, archbishop, let me speak.” In the cavern of his chest, his heart stirs, but it is not with longing -- at least, no more than is usual in their presence. Instead, it’s fear that sets him to quivering. “I must confess to lustful thoughts on more than one occasion.”

There is no surprised intake of breath, but when he looks up at them, masochist that he is, their eyes are wide. “I see,” they say, their voice so breathless that he has to lean forward to catch the words. “Yet those alone are not so grievous as you seem to believe. What about these thoughts plague you so?”

“I indulge in them,” he says, and his gaze is arrested by the solemn stare that awaits him, green as new growth but far more sturdy. “And they are graphic.”

“And?”

“They are about you.”

He does not mean to say it; he is a fool for letting the beauty in front of him loosen his tongue. Byleth stands, and he closes his eyes and waits for the fury he knows they are capable of raining down upon him, the hatred that will surely be awaiting him.

A hand cradles his jaw, and he opens his eyes to see them bend forward, to watch the pale green of their lashes brush the tops of their cheeks as they close their eyes and kiss him.

Relief arrests him, but it’s soon washed aside by hunger, raw and brutal and all-consuming. In his fantasies, it had always been him in the lead, but when he surges forward to meet them, their hand turns to steel and guides him further down into his seat, pressing with a gentle yet inexorable force until they settle in his lap, thighs spread around his waist, the fabric of their dalmatic and chasuble rucking up until he can see the skin of their calves beneath.

“Relax,” they say, pulling back until the slick redness of their mouth is near-level with his gaze. “This can be your penance, should you want it.”

“I hardly think this is a punishment.”

“No?” A hint of teeth flashes from behind their kiss-swollen grin. “Then how about you sit there and don’t touch. It would only be fair after you’ve made me wait for so long.”

There is no time to question, to fit together the pieces of a puzzle he had not dared to look at, because they are on him again, hands framing his face, running down his chest, grasping at the fabric of his clothes like it has personally offended them. They undo the buttons of his shirt like they’ve practiced for it, waiting for this moment.

Waiting for  _ him. _

For every inch of skin they expose, burning under the combination of the unseasonably hot weather and their ministrations, their mouth follows. It’s gentle at first, exploratory and inquisitive, but as muscle jumps under the press of teeth, they grow bolder, catching skin in the point of an incisor and bruising it until he will have no choice but to remember this when morning comes.

All the while, he sits, hands flexing and knuckles whitening as he tries so desperately to accept his penance.

“Byleth.” Their name is punched-out and half-garbled, but their hand stills at his waist. “I fear I am not strong enough…”

They smile, eyes crinkling half-shut with the force of it, and Seteth feels as though he has been struck open-handed. “Then I think you’ve completed your penance before the goddess. You’ve punished yourself for long enough, haven’t you?”

He has been around for long enough to know this as permission to do as he so desperately wants and touch them, yet his hands do not seem to be able to move.  _ Damnable bastard,  _ he berates himself.  _ Can you not even do this right? _

Byleth knows him better than he ever could have predicted, however, and though sweat beads on their forehead as they grind down on him, tearing a ragged groan from his throat, they still manage to be playful as they draw up their garments even further, revealing the expanse of their thighs.

“Come now, love,” they say, and  _ oh,  _ how every inch of him quivers at those words. “All is yours for the taking. You have been so good.”

Yet it is they who fall upon him first, working the ties of his trousers open and drawing him out, hand soft and calloused in equal measure as they work him up further, their own hips circling in time with the movement of their wrist.

It is perfect. It is not enough.

“Byleth,” he begs, and if he cannot articulate what he needs, then they know well enough; when they slide over him, warm and wet and already so slick, he gasps in time with their drawn-out moan.  _ “More.” _

“Maybe one m-more prayer, just to be certain you mean what you say, and then we’ll see.” This time, the smug look on their face is blurred by pleasure, and as they shift, their hips twitch involuntarily, their head tilting back in pleasure. “Whenever you’re ready.”

For a moment, he wonders if they’re joking, but they don’t move, and he craves them so badly that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to earn the pleasure he knows he can only find in them. Perhaps they know more of the old way than he once believed. “O my Goddess,” he begins, then cuts off with a tortured gasp as their thumb tweaks cruelly at his exposed nipple.

“Again.”

“O my Goddess, I have sinned in thine eyes,” he says, lips shaping the familiar words with more thought than he has ever given before. They are rocking against him again, and his voice cracks horribly on his next words. “I detest my sins, for they are crimes against Thy grace-”

A hushed groan, but this time, it comes from Byleth’s mouth, and he falters for a moment, longing to soak it in.

“Thou art deserving of my best efforts, and, in failure, I firmly resolve to find Thy path with the help of Thy love.”

Byleth’s mouth is soft at his jaw, their waist soft under his fingers. He thrusts up once, twice, three times, and they cry out.

“With the guidance of Thee, I will sin no more, and in Thy name find the ecstasy of a blameless life.”

And he does, punctuated with a choked-off, keening sound that certainly alerts any who might be nearby of their activities, should they not already know.

As they clean themselves up, Byleth’s face is blissfully calm, and he is loath to disturb it. As he has long since known, though, he is a sentimental old fool.

“Love?” he asks, far too hopeful for a man of his age.

“Oh, Seteth,” they say. “Of course I mean it.”

They press a kiss that says they know his feelings in return, and if this is where sentiment has led him, he knows he will succumb to it for as long as they will let him.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/kingblaiddyd)


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